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Do you have enough cal/mg in your water? Those act as a buffer and slow the effects of rapidly changing pH.
What happens to the pH if you fill a bucket up with a gallon of tap water and let it sit on the counter for a day or two, does it change? stabilize? Take a reading every 12 hours and see how it responds. Can you mix a gallon of nutrients and have it sit unused (never in contact with your equipment/res) without any issues, or does it only happen when in your system? What are you adjusting the pH with?
-------------------- Any help given is for educational purposes only. Its your responsibility not to break any applicable laws
Bamboo Bongs I make | Perfect Dry and Cure | Grapegod under LED “Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune intoned in the distance by an invisible player.” ~ Albert Einstein
your ec/ppm of the tap water should give you an idea. Sounds like your water source is pretty whack, where does your tap water come from?
-------------------- Any help given is for educational purposes only. Its your responsibility not to break any applicable laws
Bamboo Bongs I make | Perfect Dry and Cure | Grapegod under LED “Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune intoned in the distance by an invisible player.” ~ Albert Einstein
That's what I would start with. If your own county can't produce their own water the next one over might have some hobunk issues as well, and it sounds like they've got some.
-------------------- Any help given is for educational purposes only. Its your responsibility not to break any applicable laws
Bamboo Bongs I make | Perfect Dry and Cure | Grapegod under LED “Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune intoned in the distance by an invisible player.” ~ Albert Einstein
10 gallons a week times 9 weeks, 90 gallons total, thats going to add up quick and be a lot of water hauling. You'll need to add some cal/mg to it either way.
-------------------- Any help given is for educational purposes only. Its your responsibility not to break any applicable laws
Bamboo Bongs I make | Perfect Dry and Cure | Grapegod under LED “Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune intoned in the distance by an invisible player.” ~ Albert Einstein
So basically the way pH works is that it is your "potential Hydrogen" when water is sitting by itself, it is not just H2O, but H2O and a small percentage of charged H+ and OH-. by adding salts (ions, or joined molecules with an extra or missing an electron, so that you have a balance of +'s and -'s forming a solid; table salt is NA+ and CL-) you change the energy level and break apart more of those water molecules, and you have H+ an OH-. Those are both floating around no longer as water, but as some bad ass molecules that want to get their charge balanced. This is the basic concept of inertia, the storing and transfer of energy, its just stored in the bonds of the molecules.
Now Calcium/Magnesium come along, both able to go to 2+ electrons in their ionic form, making them able to grab onto a bunch of molecules (but not forming a solid because the energy level of the water) and prevent them from getting huge spikes of free H+'s and OH-'s. Cal/mg are both big fat molecules, which make them able to stave off change, and Hydrogen is the lightest easiest to move around molecule, imagine a big fat guy fighting a bunch of midgets. Eventually he'd be taken if you had enough fast enough, but he'd hold his own for awhile.
Its been awhile since chemistry, but thats the gist of it. Its actually pretty complex and takes awhile to fully grasp. One of the millions of amazing properties of water. pH is the struggle of all the individual molecule's trying to reach equilibrium--always perusing equilibrium.
You might be able to let the water sit for a few days and see if that helps stabilize it before using it. If its changing by itself out the tap then it should equalize eventually. I guess dissolved gases that are leaving the water. Dissolved gases like CO2 makes it water more acidic, some people even have natural gas in their water.
-------------------- Any help given is for educational purposes only. Its your responsibility not to break any applicable laws
Bamboo Bongs I make | Perfect Dry and Cure | Grapegod under LED “Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune intoned in the distance by an invisible player.” ~ Albert Einstein
Your bubbling air through your water, that will change your pH as you dissolve various gases into the water. You can also pump bacteria directly into your nutrients this way as well. When I was considering Canna I got into a huge conversation with the customer service guy and he said that Canna holds up well and doesn't need too much agitation(its true), but the air-stone will definitely mess things up with the pH. Should I absolutely have to have something, get a waterfall pump that comes on for a minute or two every few hours.
I tried adding a waterfall pump but it was not worth the cleaning effort, it eventually gets covered in salts and for Canna its not required. Thats one of the things I love about Canna is that after four weeks of just topping off my tank there was only mild scum coating the tank that washes right off with a nylon brush, whereas with Advanced Nutrients in the past would leave me crusty after a few days and needing to put in effort to scrub all the crap off. Thats in a non-recirculating standing nutrient tank.
Try it without the air stone and see what happens.
-------------------- Any help given is for educational purposes only. Its your responsibility not to break any applicable laws
Bamboo Bongs I make | Perfect Dry and Cure | Grapegod under LED “Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune intoned in the distance by an invisible player.” ~ Albert Einstein
Lets do some experiments to get to the bottom of all this.
Set up 4 gallons of tap water. Label them: Tap, Tap-AIR, Nute, Nute-AIR.
Without pH adjust Two plain tap water-one with an air stone, one without. LOG their pH over a few days (every few hours if possible, all at the same time for better analysis).
Same with the nutrients. Mix the two gallons together so that they equalize, not just two separately mixed gallons with different concentrations. Then after a few days turn off the air stones and see what happens compared to the non-air.
Repeat but with the pH adjusted from the beginning, so you might need 8 gallons and more air stones or do it again in a few days. And when you get the Cal-Mg you can try a similar experiment to watch it in action.
The idea is to get some graphs of the pH over time and also to compare to the direct effect of the air stone. Keep good records, try and take readings at set intervals like every 8 hours so you can sleep and still not effect the time-scale of the graph.
Heres an example of how much easier it is to read the data in graph form. I did that little experiment in response to someone on youtube who compared two pH- products but didn't compare strengths, only that they were both pH down. As you can see Advanced Nutrients pH- works much quicker than the Gen. Hydro pH-. You can tell with the blink of an eye, but with numbers you have to mentally consider how they compare to one another.
Notice that Time in your case will be the bottom axis, so make sure to note the time and date, and maybe now its clear why you would want consistently timed readings. If you have excel (google doc's has a free spreadsheet program that lets you share with anyone) it would be best, then I could make the graphs and we'll see what happens.
-------------------- Any help given is for educational purposes only. Its your responsibility not to break any applicable laws
Bamboo Bongs I make | Perfect Dry and Cure | Grapegod under LED “Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune intoned in the distance by an invisible player.” ~ Albert Einstein
you really don't have to unless you really want to get to the bottom of it. Try the calmag and see if that fixes it.
-------------------- Any help given is for educational purposes only. Its your responsibility not to break any applicable laws
Bamboo Bongs I make | Perfect Dry and Cure | Grapegod under LED “Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune intoned in the distance by an invisible player.” ~ Albert Einstein
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